Laura Stack creates ink paintings and collages that are an imagined view of artificial life or the
“new natural”. Her painting process begins by envisioning a fluid, bodily, cellular, or chemical world expressing its own laws of physics. Organic forms such as fungi and microscopic life and the biological processes of lava flow and branching inspire the painting imagery. She coaxes the ink across the paper’s surface, corralling, halting, spreading, and encouraging its direction. The ink shapes then morph into tendrils or bloom and disperse. Through physical gestures and the fluidity of the ink, she aims to create a sense of pulse and movement.

Stack’s work evokes contradictions – the embodiment of the natural and synthetic, the simultaneity of flatness and depth, and the illusion of movement within a still image. There is no logical reading of these paintings. They are a mirroring of the mysterious questions that define our changing relationship with the natural world. See more of Laura’s artwork at laurastackart.com